SANTA MONICA, Calif., June 27, 2007 – The search for the next ingeniously ground-breaking video game has begun. At a private developers conference this week, Nintendo announced the introduction of WiiWare, a game-creation service that will allow developers large and small to create new downloadable video game content for sale by Nintendo through the Wii Shop Channel of the hot Wii home video game system. WiiWare paves the way for smaller, more creative games to make their way to the public at lower prices, without any inventory risk to developers. The first WiiWare content will launch in early 2008.

"Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit," says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. "WiiWare brings new levels of creativity and value to the ever-growing population of Wii owners."

The possibilities for WiiWare are limited only by the imaginations of developers. WiiWare provides game creators a simple method by which they can get their games to the public. This approach, combined with the remarkable motion controls of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, will give birth to fresh takes on established genres, as well as original ideas that currently exist only in developers' minds. The reduced barriers to development provide developers the freedom to create and an inexpensive, clearly defined path to reach consumers who will ultimately determine which game will become the Next Big Thing.

WiiWare will be posted on the Wii Shop Channel. As with current Wii Shop Channel offerings, users will redeem Wii Points to download content. It will support a variety of pricing options. Details about that and upcoming projects will be announced at a later date. For more information about Wii, visit Wii.com.

We've known about this for a long time, but it's officially announced. The name is unknown, but it is currently being called WiiWare. I just hope the price is low. VC titles are pushing it, and the only reason I actually pay that much is because I already know the games. I don't know these, so the price should remain relatively cheap.

I hope there is, eventually, an option opened up for free user-created content being created and distributed online.

The prices aren't what worry me, its the storage sizes. Like XBLA for example (please leave fanboy-ish comments to the side, I'm trying to make a point here). A good amount of the great, original content for the system can go between 300-500 MB of space. We've already seen people having issues with filling up their systems with the normal VC games, so who knows how much space these original games will take up.

That's true. However, keep in mind that Nintendo licensed this company that works exclusively with hard drives. They write software for hard drives. That, the promise of downloadable content, the promise of NeoGeo games(which can sometimes reach over 700MB) and now original downloadable content all pretty much assures us that there is something in the works regarding that. A firmware update is all the Wii needs to be compatible with them.

It hasn't been officially confirmed, but honestly, these promises are impossible without one. Also, again, they are working with a hard drive company(although reasons weren't announced, they are obvious). It would be foolish if they didn't release an update in the near future.